The Man Who Grew Tomatoes

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Well, whatever it was, it did not materialise and we parted at your gates with some abruptness, as I did not altogether trust his mood.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “Tomorrow morning, with your permission, I am going to interview Tom Adams.”

  “Mrs. Beresford-Camber’s ex-swain?”

  “Exactly, and under that label.”

  “Tom won’t talk unless he wants to. He’s a true Norfolkman when it comes to keeping his own counsel. They’re not a simple people, you know, whatever outsiders may think. They can be as close as oysters when it doesn’t suit them to speak, and they are highly intelligent, although they may appear to be slow-thinking.”

  “I should never underrate a Norfolkman’s intelligence. You don’t mind, then, if I speak to Tom?”

  “Most certainly I don’t mind. I only hope you’ll find out something useful.”

  “I have every expectation that I shall. I propose to propound to him certain conclusions at which I have arrived and see whether Tom accepts or challenges them. That should give me a pointer towards my next objective.”

  She interviewed Tom in the gunroom on the following morning. He stood there, with his cloth cap in his hand and his boots heavily caked in mud, a tall, rangy, good-looking young man, his expression marred by an obstinately-set mouth which gave the impression that Dame Beatrice’s inquisition might prove less fruitful than she might hope.

  She herself was seated at a table and the picture might have been that of a small, elderly, determined but kindly schoolmistress carpeting a large, sullen pupil. She opened the session briskly.

  “Would you care to sit down, Tom?”

  “No, thank you kindly, I’ll stand.”

  “Last year you grew some rather strange tomatoes.”

  Tom was silent. His mouth became a sprung rat-trap. Dame Beatrice turned in her chair and picked out a shotgun from the rack. Tom stared. His lips moved.

  “No use to threaten me with that.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of threatening you, Tom.” She broke the gun open and inspected it. “Do you miss the rabbits around here?”

  “Ah, that us do. They old rabbits, they make a tasty l’il dish for a change. That was wholly a shame, that was, that myxamatosis. Now all us get around here is foxes, stoats, and weasels. Got to eat, same as us, and if there’s noo rabbits, they eat the ducks and chickens. Can’t blame ’em. A fox hev a right to his life, same as ever’ one else, I reckon.”

  “What about a boy, Tom?”

  Tom looked troubled. He twisted the cap between wide, thick-fingered brown hands and said:

  “I didn’t see my tomatoes working out that way. You know I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t. What was the idea of crossing the tomato plants with deadly nightshade?”

  “I wish to make Mr. Paul look a fool.”

  “How did you know that a dose of atropine would do that?—You know, you’d really better sit down.”

  Tom sucked his teeth and drew forward a garden chair.

  “I went to school,” he said, “and, us being country boys, they teach us country lore. Silly, I call it. Us know more about the country than them as teach us, I reckon.”

  “I quite think that is true. So they taught you all about vegetable poisons.”

  “One teacher we hev, he was very interested in vegetable poisons. That learn us about the foxglove and the henbane and the hemlock and the deadly nightshade and a mort of others. Course, us boys know they’re all poisonous, but that give us their fancy names and then that goo on to tell us the symptoms, to know which poison had been tooken.”

  “So you learnt that the symptoms of poisoning by atropine were so much like the symptoms of drunkenness that to the layman the two were interchangeable. All is made clear to me.”

  “I never meant noo harm to poor Master Stephen. Not if that eat all the tomatoes I send up to the house could he hev died of them. That were drownded, like coroner said.”

  “True enough, Tom. Now, then: who, besides yourself, knew of this little practical joke of yours?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “I never tell no one, not even my dad,” he said.

  “Are you sure, Tom? I ask because somebody may have got to know your secret and may have made use of it to murder Stephen Camber.”

  “Nobody know from me. I keep the fun of it all to myself.”

  “The fun of having people think that the highly respectable and entirely teetotal Paul Camber was shouting drunk?”

  “That’s about the way of it, mam.”

  “And you didn’t mind if Stephen Camber gave the same impression?”

  “Noo, I did not. The bigger the scandal for Mr. Paul, the better I’d be pleased. Take my girl, that did, and get her in trouble.”

  “Well, Tom, you are most certainly avenged.”

  Tom averted his gaze.

  “Can’t say I want it this way,” he muttered. Dame Beatrice got up.

  “Thank you, Tom,” she said. But Tom did not rise from his low-slung canvas chair.

  “I asked her to marry me, all the same,” he said, “but that wouldn’t.”

  “Indeed? When was this?”

  “When Mr. Paul goo up to Scotland.”

  “Miss Beresford was already married, Tom, when Paul Camber went to Scotland.”

  “Married? Who to?”

  “Mr. Camber, of course.”

  “Well, her father never know that, then.”

  “Did he not? Well, he certainly knows now. What matters is that young Mrs. Camber is disturbed in her mind because the baby, legally a Camber (since the marriage took place before he was born), has no prospect of inheriting the family property.”

  “No. Mr. Hugh hev that.”

  “Mrs. Camber, no doubt, is very sore about it,” said Dame Beatrice. “Now you have told me that your father knew nothing about the hybrid tomatoes, and I tell you that somebody besides yourself probably knew that you had them. What do you say to that? Answer me.”

  “Nobody know except parson.”

  “Mr. Tolley?”

  “That’s right. I tell him because that’s interested in grafting. That say I’ll never graft a tomato on to a deadly nightshade, but I say that can be done.”

  “Where, exactly, was it done, Tom? Do you mean it was not done here, at Camber Abbey?”

  “Oo, yes, that was done here, right enough. How could I look after it, else? But I don’t tell my dad because he think it a waste of time to muck around with experiments. My dad, that’s limited.”

  “But didn’t it occur to Mr. Tolley that the result of the grafting, if it proved successful, would be a poisonous fruit?”

  “That never mention it.”

  Tom then took himself off and Dame Beatrice, idly breaking open and squinting at the gun she was holding, reflected that it was straining credulity beyond its elastic limits to think that Tom had told nobody but the Reverend Arthur Tolley of the experiment. She went to visit Tolley.

  The incumbent of the parish was clipping the edges of a small lawn and Dame Beatrice watched him for some time before he was aware of her presence. When he had straightened up, he said:

  “Ah, good morning, Dame Beatrice. I did not notice your approach. I was composing my sermon for Matins next Sunday and was entirely engrossed in my argument.”

  “I am so sorry to have interrupted you.”

  “Not at all. I am glad of an excuse to knock off work and invite you to come indoors for a glass of sherry and a biscuit. I don’t drink unless I have a guest, so your coming is in the nature of a treat for me.”

  “I am not at all sure,” said Dame Beatrice, as she accompanied him up the long garden path to the cottage, “that I shall be justified in accepting your hospitality.”

  “Really? How is that?”

  “I have come to take you to task.”

  “Oh, about my nocturnal visits to Miss Salaman. I have given them up. But, my dear Dame Beatrice, do you not think th
at the end justifies the means?”

  “No, Brother Ignatius, I do not. I consider that a most pernicious doctrine. Have you ever stopped to consider what your parishioners—let alone your bishop—would think of these Romeo-sponsored proceedings?”

  “Oh, but I assure you that I have confided in my bishop and have agreed to abide by his decision.”

  “Well, it is not with your visits to Miss Salaman that I am concerned. I want to talk about your connection with Tom Adams’ experimental grafting.”

  The vicar did not reply to this until he and his guest had joined his sister in the room of the cottage which did duty both as dining-room and study. When he had poured out three glasses of sherry and Catherine had produced biscuits, he said:

  “Yes, I know. But, you see, I had no idea that Tom, poor fellow, intended any mischief.”

  “So you know that, indirectly, those poisonous succulents brought about the death of Stephen Camber?”

  “What does this mean?” asked Catherine.

  “It means what it seems to mean,” said Arthur. He sipped his sherry. “I am partly responsible for Stephen Camber’s drowning. I should have foreseen that Tom’s was a dangerous experiment, but it never once occurred to me that Tom would try the results of it on anybody but himself and, possibly (for he has a bucolic sense of humour), on me. That he would be wicked enough to send the fruits to Camber Abbey I could not have conceived, neither did he confess that he had done so.”

  “Really, Arthur, you can be silly at times!” exclaimed Catherine. “You surely did not think that a boy of Tom Adams’ mentality would be content to work at a scientific experiment and not make any use of the results?”

  “So you know what Tom did, do you?” asked her brother.

  “I didn’t know it was Tom, but I’ve heard from Hugh about the poisoned tomatoes and if you encouraged Tom’s experiment you’ve been criminally thoughtless.”

  “My conscience absolves me, Catherine. I assure you it does. My own interest was entirely scientific, and I presumed that Tom’s would be the same. No, really, Catherine, although I admit responsibility, I really cannot blame myself very much for what happened.”

  “What caused Tom to confide in you?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “He did not so much confide in me as ask me to check his knowledge. I agreed with him that the potato, the tomato, and the deadly nightshade belong to the same plant family and then I asked him why he was interested and he told me that he was intending to try this business of grafting the tomato on to the deadly nightshade in the hope of obtaining a fruit which should look reasonably like a tomato and yet have slightly poisonous properties. I challenged him that such a grafting would not work and he said he was determined to try. I was interested, as I told you, and said that if he did get fruit I should be interested to see it. Of course, with (I see now) the best of reasons, although he was successful he told me nothing about it.”

  “And Ethel did not warn her employer about the fruit because it would have meant a confession of her own guilt in having taken what she thought were ordinary tomatoes from the dining-room sideboard. Well, it is all very interesting but it does not help as much as I hoped it would, unless—Where did Tom actually keep this grafted plant? Surely not in one of the Camber Abbey greenhouses?”

  “Yes, I’m sure he did.”

  “But surely his father would have noticed it?” said Catherine. “And what about Paul and Stephen Camber? Didn’t they ever inspect the greenhouses?”

  “You had better ask Tom,” said Arthur.

  “I shall ask old Abel,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “It will upset him terribly if he gets to know that Tom’s foolishness may have helped to cause Stephen’s death,” said Catherine.

  “I hope he will not get to know. There is no reason why he should. In fact, I shall get Hugh to put that one particular question. It will seem quite a natural one, coming from him.”

  “I wonder whether Tom and Abel knew of Ethel’s reaction to the poisonous tomatoes?” said Catherine, who had heard Ethel’s story from Hugh.

  “There’s no reason why they should,” said Dame Beatrice. “None of the servants had the slightest idea that the tomatoes came from Tom, and, certainly, at the time, nobody knew they were poisoned. It was generally considered that Ethel was allergic to them or was drunk.”

  “But she must have eaten tomatoes previously and suffered no ill effects,” said Catherine.

  “Quite so, but these, no doubt, were thought to be a particular kind that she had not sampled before, as, of course, they were,” said Arthur. Dame Beatrice nodded and, soon afterwards, took her leave. Arthur accompanied her to the front gate.

  “I don’t like to ask her about it, so perhaps you can tell me,” he said. “I notice that Catherine no longer wears the engagement ring Hugh gave her.”

  “I can tell you nothing about it,” replied Dame Beatrice, skating warily round the truth, for she did not intend to allow him to know that she believed the engagement had placed the couple in some danger from Stephen’s murderer and that it was by her advice that they had appeared to break it off. The Reverend Arthur Tolley stood at his gate and watched her until a bend in the road removed her from his sight. Then he sighed, picked up the shears, and continued clipping the edges of his lawn. As he clipped he whistled. The thought that his sister had broken off her engagement filled him with a most selfish contentment.

  Dame Beatrice sought Hugh, when she got back to Camber Abbey, and found him, with a pipe in his mouth and a motoring atlas on his knee, in his library. He got up, took out the one and put down the other, and smiled at her.

  “Every man who haunts the village pub has accepted it that Catherine and I are estranged,” he said.

  “And every woman who haunts the village post-office has, by this time, no doubt, speculated upon the reason for it,” said Dame Beatrice, “and that is a very satisfactory state of affairs. And now, my dear Hugh, it would be useful for me to know how often, or how rarely, your cousin and his son visited the greenhouses here.”

  “If they were like me, not at all. I haven’t been near the greenhouses or into the kitchen garden since I’ve been here. Why do you need to know, if I may ask?”

  “Just to settle one slightly doubtful point. Will you arrange to visit the greenhouses in the company of Abel Adams—Abel, not Tom; I don’t want Tom to be there—and, as you are looking round, will you ask, in as casual a way as you can, how often Paul and Stephen Camber did the same thing?—either or both, I mean.”

  “Certainly. I’ll do it now. Tom is busy in the punt on the lake cutting weed, and I’ve just seen Abel pruning the roses, so they are widely separated at the moment.”

  He went out and was absent for nearly an hour. When he came back he reported that he had had a long talk with Abel about the gardens and the greenhouses, that Paul had seldom visited the latter but that he had had a habit of visiting the hot-houses to count the bunches of grapes and the peaches. Abel had further explained that he and his son stuck to their own jobs for the most part, rarely worked together, and were responsible for their own greenhouses because both liked to be independent, Abel having the practical knowledge and Tom some degree of book-learning.

  “So it would have been the simplest thing in the world for Tom to have grown the poisonous tomatoes without his father or Paul Camber finding out what he was doing,” said Dame Beatrice. “Did you notice any suspicious-looking plants in Tom’s greenhouse?”

  “I wasn’t shown Tom’s greenhouse.”

  “I see. Abel really does respect his son’s privacy, then. It seems a little odd. What about Stephen? Did he visit the greenhouses?”

  “According to Abel, he did not. Boys, even the quietest, according to him, should be kept away from glass, so Stephen was very actively discouraged from taking any interest in greenhouses and, in any case, the one I saw today was extremely dull, being used merely as a seed-bed and forcing-house.”

  “Well, now you must see Tom’s green
house—not that the grafted deadly nightshade will still be there, I imagine—and put the same questions to him as you have put to his father.”

  “After lunch, then. The gong will go in ten minutes and I must wash.”

  Tom was busy on his half of the kitchen garden after lunch and his father was still occupied among the roses. At Hugh’s request, Tom showed him his greenhouse and supported his father’s assertion that Paul Camber had taken no interest in that or in the kitchen garden. Hugh had looked closely, but there was no sign of the grafted deadly nightshade although plenty of small tomato-plants, neatly supported by sticks, were coming up in flower-pots.

  “I asked whether Paul and Stephen were fond of tomatoes,” added Hugh, at the end of the recital, “and Tom gave me a very old-fashioned look and said that Paul had not been as fond of tomatoes as Tom would have liked him to be, but that Stephen may have been a bit too fond of them for his own good. A very revealing answer I thought it.”

  “Yes, indeed. Well, now we have to find the opportunist who took advantage of Stephen Camber’s condition, after he had eaten the poisonous tomatoes, to hook him into the river and drown him.”

  “Yes, of course, and it won’t be very easy, and—I hope you won’t mind this!—there’s something I want to do, in addition to that. I mean to go up to Strathpeffer and see what I can find out for myself about Paul’s death. There is a considerable mystery there, and I don’t somehow think you got to the bottom of it, if you don’t object to my saying so.”

  “So that’s what the motoring maps were for,” said Dame Beatrice. “No, I don’t object or mind in the very slightest. I shall be going up there myself later on, but no doubt we shall work along different lines.”

  “I want to know whether that queer fellow Wayland—wasn’t that his alias?—is still there.”

  “I should think it very doubtful, but you will see.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Not Paul but Peter

  “There had been a moment when I believed I recognised, faint and far, the cry of a child.”

  Henry James

  In the end, Dame Beatrice persuaded Hugh to put off his visit to Scotland for a week or two while she busied herself with various strange errands, the nature of which she did not disclose. All that Hugh knew was that she removed herself again from Camber Abbey and for nearly a fortnight he saw almost nothing of her. The days were lengthening, the weather was fine and sunny, and the three times he met her—by accident, never by appointment—she was armed with field-glasses and a camera and appeared to be watching birds, but, puzzlingly, never in the immediate neighbourhood of Camber.